Annus Horribilus

This is the time of year when pundits review the year that is sagging into the sunset and look forward to the new one by making some predictions. Well, I'm not a pundit so I'm not going to do that.

I remember a few years back when Queen Elizabeth referred to the year just past as her Annus Horribilus. I though she was breaking royal protocol and describing an embarrassing medical condition... But she was of course, saying that sophisticated way of hers that it had been a horrible year. This one has been pretty bad. Iraq has been the only bright spot. Nobody called that one.

So much for review. Arnaud De Borchgrave has written very pessimistic article reviewing predictions of a dystopic future for the US. I don't want to dwell on such negativity so I will merely provide the link.

The Western Wall in Jerusalem is where they write prayers down, fold them up and insert them between the stones. This is not a Wailing Wall, but I do want to lay down a few prayers for the new year:

- For President Obama, that God may guide him in all things
- For peace, please Lord, somewhere, anywhere, but most of all in our hearts, because that is where peace must begin
- For the citizens and politicians of the United States, that we learn enduring lessons from the financial ruin we have brought upon ourselves
- That we may reacquaint ourselves with the Founding Fathers and the ideals they held dear
- That we look to our Creator, giving thanks and asking for guidance
- For the unemployed, that their troubled road be short

Happy 2009 and may God bless us in the New Year!

Reality -vs- Computer Models

More bad news for the Global Warming crowd: Reality is contradicting the hysterical computer models showing the Earth's temperature approaching that of the sun if we all don't repent and send our dollars to Reverend Al Gores's Church of Gaia. Yes, global temperatures in all parts of the world are falling, except in the fevered imaginings of the climate change crowd.

Reality can be intrusive like that. Christopher Booker sums it all up in his Daily Telegraph article:

Easily one of the most important stories of 2008 has been all the evidence suggesting that this may be looked back on as the year when there was a turning point in the great worldwide panic over man-made global warming. Just when politicians in Europe and America have been adopting the most costly and damaging measures politicians have ever proposed, to combat this supposed menace, the tide has turned in three significant respects.

First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.

Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a "scientific consensus" in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world's most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that "consensus" which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.

Thirdly, as banks collapsed and the global economy plunged into its worst recession for decades, harsh reality at last began to break in on those self-deluding dreams which have for so long possessed almost every politician in the western world. As we saw in this month's Poznan conference, when 10,000 politicians, officials and "environmentalists" gathered to plan next year's "son of Kyoto" treaty in Copenhagen, panicking politicians are waking up to the fact that the world can no longer afford all those quixotic schemes for "combating climate change" with which they were so happy to indulge themselves in more comfortable times.

Personally, I think it was the election of Mr. Obama. Didn't he say the oceans would recede?

WikiHow: How to Pick Up Men

I can't believe they need a WikiHow for how to pick up men. I thought maybe it was some type of physics of leverage thing, but no, it was actually advice to women on how to gain a man's attention. Here are the steps:

How To Pick Up Men:

1. Pick a good spot
2. Flirt from a distance
3. Start a conversation
4. Close the deal

WikiHow is usually spot on, but they fell down on this one. Here's what it should say:

1. If you got it, flaunt it
2. Food
3. Booze
4. Guns, sports, don't mention Obama or Ben Affleck (unless your pick-up is a metrosexual)

The Atheist's Jihad

Disbelief is a fairly simple concept, one simply does not believe, applied to the atheist it connotes a disbelief in deities. The term for one who believes in a deity or deities is theist. There are many ranges of disbelief ranging from agnosticism to strong atheism. An agnostic believes that the existence of a deity is unknowable, and there are even agnostic theists who believe that the proposition of at least one deity is true, but that the deity itself is unknowable.

There are also varying degrees of atheism and overlap between and among them. An implicit atheist does not believe in any deities, yet without a conscious rejection of it, in fact they haven't given it any thought at all, implicit atheists are undoubtedly rare. An explicit atheist has considered the existence of deities and has rejected the possibility. There are also strong and weak atheists, a strong atheist disavows the possibility of the existence of a deity with certainty, a weak atheist is someone who is not quite sure, some people classify agnostics as weak atheists.

There are positive and negative atheists, Gora, an Indian atheist calls for a secular society with positive values and states positive atheism entails such things as a being morally upright, showing an understanding that religious people have reasons to believe, not proselytising or lecturing others about atheism, and defending oneself with truthfulness instead of aiming to 'win' any confrontations with outspoken critics. Negative atheism is often given the same definition as weak atheism but I would propose that it is the opposite of positive atheism as defined by Gora, that is the active belief that people do not have reason to believe, should not believe, and through action on the part of the negative atheist be persuaded, or forced, not to believe.

The atheist's jihad is a manifestation of negative atheism, it is the struggle (jihad) to eliminate religion, it exceeds the notion of the secular as being separate from religion not opposed to the existence of religion. The line between separation of church and state is a narrow one, the founding fathers left us with the predicament of not establishing or favoring any one religion while not interfering with the free exercise of any religion at the same time. The problem with the atheist's jihad is that it attempts to further the latter, in attempting to exorcise all religion from public life it interferes with the free exercise thereof.

The atheists jihad are those activities that attempt to completely eliminate any indication whatsoever of the existence of religion from public life, many with the underlying motive and belief that if completely eliminated from public life it will wither and die in private. It can be found in the argument that religion is the source of all evil and misfortune in the world, the root cause of most if not all war, and generally the primary source of oppression.

Take the statement from the atheist display put up in Olympia Washington "Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds". This statement is not one of fact but of opinion... it is the publicly exercised equivalent of running into a church and yelling "you're all fools, there is no God". One could, as legitimately, argue that religion opens hearts and minds and be just as correct. I would have no problem with an affirmative display of the belief in science and have no problem with the first part of the display "At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail". It is a fairly positive statement, unfortunately the erectors of this sign (The Freedom from Religion Foundation) chose not to espouse there own positive values, but to assault the values and beliefs of others.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation (http://www.ffrf.org/) claims to defend the separation of church and state. Its purposes, as stated in its bylaws, are to promote the constitutional principle of separation of state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to non theism. I fail to understand how they can state "Our Constitution was very purposefully written to be a godless document, whose only references to religion are exclusionary" when the the sentence they seem so concerned with reads "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof". How can one construe the statement 'prohibiting the free exercise thereof' as exclusionary?

The atheists jihad by it's very nature is lacking in tolerance and acceptance. It is not a campaign of freedom or free thinking, but of thought control. The jihadist rejects not only the existence of a deity but the cultural value and heritage of religion. They point to religion as the source of all evil, presuming themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to the religious, yet can offer no rationale explanation for the evils committed by atheists and atheistic states, which more often than not are manifestations of evil. Too many mistakenly assume that secular means without religion, when its true meaning is separate from religion.

The problem lies not in atheism, but in the attempted and forceful promulgation of atheism. It is not the desire for a separation of church and state that is wrong, it is the self-centered arrogance of the belief that they are right, everyone else is wrong, and religion must be eliminated completely. The atheistic jihadist condemns the fundamentalist while acting in the same manner with a different agenda. I no more want to live in a theocracy than a technocracy, for both are elitist and derived from the false notion that one belief system is superior to others.

The negative atheist is not for science, he is against religion. Negative atheism seeks not the advancement of dialogue but the repression of belief, it hides behind the mask of science and reason in an attempt to find legitimacy, yet at its root it is a philosophy of opposition. The negative atheist embraces all that is wrong with religion while ignoring all that is good, they seek not to promote a belief in science but to eliminate a belief in God. They attempt to elevate themselves by belittling others and to advance their beliefs by repressing others. The negative atheist is as fundamentally wrong and dogmatic as the fundamentalist... in the belief that their atheism is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted or diverged from.

It was the namesake of this blog who stated “After coming into contact with a religious man I always feel I must wash my hands”, I'll go him one further and say that after coming into contact with a negative atheist I always feel I must take a shower.



~Finntann~

The Evangelical atheist

Militant atheism was furthest from my mind this Christmas season, yet has been brought to the forefront by some recent comments on the post of "We had a Merry Christmas". It struck me as odd why such a benign post would elicit such a response, then it occurred to me that the response in and of itself was evangelical, so to speak... soliciting converts to 'the truth'.

Of course, as soon as I googled "Evangelical atheist" I was rolling on the floor, for the third hit down on the page was a link to Urban Dictionary which read:

"evangelical atheist - 2 definitions - See [asshole] An evangelical atheist is one who not only believes there is no god or other supreme being, but is obsessed with convincing everyone around them to become an atheist too, usually through hard-line intolerance (the kind they accuse other religions of). ." Don't believe me? Google it.

Ted Peters had this to say on the subject "It used to be that atheists didn’t bother anybody. They simply stayed home from church on Sunday and avoided praying. The social impact was minimal. "

Click here for the rest of a well reasoned article in response to Richard Dawkins: http://www.counterbalance.net/new-atheism/index-frame.html

It is not the argument that I find of interest, but the fanatical and zealous way in which it is delivered. This is not the calm and reasoned presentation of logic, but a vicious diatribe. It is the irrational extreme of Denis Diderot's "Men will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest". It is the mindset of the soviets, that in 1918 summarily executed 10 orthodox hierarchs and founded The Society of the Godless (an actual organization, not a commentary on soviet society). It is this 'enlightened' viewpoint that resulted in the closing of hundreds of churches, the slaughter of 80 bishops, and a quick trip to the Gulag for thousands of clerics.

One wonders if the fanaticism of the response would have been directed at the author had he "had a happy solstice"? Or if some underlying rage at either organized religion or Christianity is the root cause. I would like to point out to our secular friend a tenet of that most secular of documents, "The Universal Declaration of Human Rights": "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance." I might also point out that the founding document of our nation, in instituting the separation of church and state, says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.

I might point out Mark Vuletic's (an atheist) words on the subject: Atheism has a comparatively small public voice, but it is a voice that many believers hear. However, when they listen to this voice, they often hear little more than slurs and insults. When interacting with atheists, believers are frequently met with the same arrogance and condescension, the same hatred and vitriol, the same bigotry and prejudice, as atheists so often receive from believers. In short, believers tend to encounter in atheists exactly what they have been taught to expect... If we wish to shatter once and for all the myth that atheism and immorality are inseparable, we must not deny believers the compassion, tolerance, patience, and understanding that humanists are supposed to extend to all.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mark_vuletic/moral.html

One wonders why someone so obviously convinced of their own moral, logical, and scientific superiority needs to resort to such vile rhetoric in attempting to convince others of the superiority of their position. I have had many friends in my life who have been non-believers, and while the majority of them were more appropriately termed agnostic, I have found the atheists among them to be rather vain, based upon the supposed 'infallibility' of their beliefs. I generally find anyone with absolutist views, whether atheistic, scientific, or religious to be rather intolerable. Even that great philosopher of the Scottish enlightenment, David Hume, contended that meaningful statements about the universe are always qualified by some degree of doubt.

One often finds atheists who advance the argument that religion has been the cause of most of the evil one finds in the historical record, while overlooking the likes of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot. They also overlook the great contributions to peace that science as brought, like Bows and Arrows, Guns, Bigger Guns, and that all encompassing advance of apocalyptic Biblical (or Bhagavad Gita) proportions, the H-Bomb. The argument that religion is evil overlooks the common factor in all evil, us. It is not the nature of religion that institutes such occurrences as the Spanish Inquisition, but the flawed nature of man. One might make the argument that evil stems from absolutism, for most if not all of the evil in our history has stemmed from absolute positions, be it fascist, communist, racist, or theist. It is the belief in one's absolute superiority that propagates throughout history as manifestations of absolute evil, horror, and inhumanity.

While a firm advocate of the separation of church and state, I have always believed that religion, in the form of comparative theology, should be taught in school. Separation of church and state seeks to prevent the establishment of a state religion (Establishment Clause), it was (IMHO) never intended to erase religion from society (Exercise Clause), and while it is possible to separate religion from state, it is virtually impossible to separate religion from culture. Religion, like art and science, is part of the cultural heritage of man, all men, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, or any number of other faiths. In a free public context such displays promote interaction and tolerance.

The 'Christmas Tree Controversy' is one that is particularly irksome. The public expression of faith should be something cherished in our society, the freedom of religion (not freedom from religion) being one of our great nations founding principles. It seems that far from offering religious freedom, we are in the foolishness of political correctness attempting to ban religion from the public space, as if it were something shameful in this enlightened age that should be hidden away like porn... it's okay, but only in the privacy of your own home. I would have no problem with a creche in the town square, any more that I would have a problem with a Jewish, Muslim, or any other display. Living overseas, I can say I took no offense to Buddha's Birthday celebrations and found them educational, and even fun. I take no offense at being greeted with "Īd mubārak" (Blessed Eid), nor would I take offense at being invited to have a Happy Ostara (Wiccan) . To take offense at the proffered good will of others, whatever the reason is petty and small.

What I do take offense at, although I would not prohibit them, are atheist displays such as the one in Olympia, Washington that read "At this season of the Winter Solstice may reason prevail. There are no gods, no devils, no angels, no heaven or hell. There is only our natural world. Religion is but myth and superstition that hardens hearts and enslaves minds." I don't oppose the viewpoint, I don't believe it but I don't recommend banning it, but that the display is more of a negative assault than a profession of belief. It is no more acceptable than fundamentalists pointing out Jews as the killer of Jesus in a Hanukkah display or the protesting by the Westboro Baptist Church at the funerals of military members. By all means celebrate your beliefs, celebrate Galileo's Birthday (Feb 15) if it makes you happy, put a whole calendar of Scientific Holidays together, but a 'celebration' putting down other peoples beliefs and customs should be beneath you.

All of this serves to illustrate one main point, that extremism is not the sole domain of religion, one can find extremists of all points of view from religion, to science, to politics, to sociology. The only rational approach is one of cautious restraint and dialogue. No one has ever advanced their own position by attacking the beliefs of others, unless that advance came solely from intimidation.

Until you come to the table with something positive to offer, you just come across as vulgar, barbaric, and mean...

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

~Finntann~

NYT: Irresponsible Lending Caused Economic Crisis

An amazing admission from the official paper of the Democratic Party, the New York Times: Loaning money to people who couldn't pay it back caused the financial crisis. Of course they don't say it just like that. They faithfully lay out the facts, assign blame to the wrong people, then draw the wrong conclusions. This is why readership is dwindling at the Senile Old Lady.

They also admit that government is a guilty party. Of course, Barny Frank, Chris Dodd, and Chuck Schumer are never mentioned. No, in the Toilet Paper of Record's version, President Bush is the only villain.

The NYT propagandists start by weaving the fantasy that President Bush invented the idea of pushing homeownership on more Americans. He did not; this initiative was started by President Carter, greatly bolstered by the Clinton administration, and indeed enthusiastically embraced by President Bush.

Eight years after arriving in Washington vowing to spread the dream of homeownership, Mr. Bush is leaving office, as he himself said recently, “faced with the prospect of a global meltdown” with roots in the housing sector he so ardently championed.

There are plenty of culprits, like lenders who peddled easy credit, consumers who took on mortgages they could not afford and Wall Street chieftains who loaded up on mortgage-backed securities without regard to the risk.

But the story of how we got here is partly one of Mr. Bush’s own making, according to a review of his tenure that included interviews with dozens of current and former administration officials.

He pushed hard to expand homeownership, especially among minorities, an initiative that dovetailed with his ambition to expand the Republican tent — and with the business interests of some of his biggest donors. But his housing policies and hands-off approach to regulation encouraged lax lending standards.

The Bush critics go on to explain how the president and his staff failed to recognize what was causing the housing market to tank and why foreclosures were increasing. Then they pile on some tired rhetoric about not enough regulations. Note the lack of praise for the president's big-hearted generosity; that doesn't fit the storyline. No, helping poor minorities was a mere unintended byproduct of lining his political cronies' pockets and grabbing more power. Do these people actually believe the crap they write?

What this slanted piece of writing inadvertently shows is that by the time we recognized the housing bubble, the seeds of destruction had already been sewn. Government had already forced lending institutions to irresponsibly loosen time-tested standards. That's how unqualified borrowers ended up getting mortgages, which in turn explains the high foreclosure rates. The mortgage industry had previously done a good job predicting who could and who could not pay back a loan. Uncle Sam stepped in, made them lower the bar, and, just as night follows day, foreclosures increased. That's the deregulation that wrecked the market.

Missing in all of this drivel is the cautionary tale of government intervention, no matter how good-hearted or well intentioned, and the lessons we can learn from it.

Just as giving a society the trappings of democracy does not make it democratic, giving people the outward signs of financial solvency does not make them financially secure. Democracy and financial security cannot be imposed. They are outward manifestations of an inner attitude. Democratic institutions and thrifty homeownership are the tangible and beneficial fruits that spring from those noble inner motives.

But this type of inductive reasoning is beyond the New York Times, which is why they now find themselves on the ever growing junk heap of national failures. It is much easier to draw a "Bush is Stoopid" cartoon than it is to provide a balanced analysis that could actually educate people.

Blame Bush, blame congress. They all had a share in creating and crashing this economic lead balloon. More important than fixing blame (nobody in DC pays for their mistakes anyway) is to learn the right lesson. Presidents and legislators intervened in a previously-rational market and forced it to make irrational decisions, causing that market to fail. Now we are all paying the price.

You can pound a square peg into a round hole if you're the government and you have a big enough hammer. Just watch out for the splinters and the sparks.

Looking for hope from a politician is like looking for love from a prostitute, and the outcome is the same for both.

GOP The Magic Dumbo

The GOP has once again shown why it is the stupid party. Chip Salsman wants to run the GOP, so he plied potential voters with a Paul Shanklin CD that included the song "Barack the Magic Negro." It is a political parody based upon an LA Times opinion piece of the same name. The leadership was caught flat-footed and red-handed, and is now scrambling, crab-like, to defend itself.

Here's part of the hollow, vacuous statement from flaccid, ineffectual party chairman Mike Duncan:

"I am shocked and appalled that anyone would think this is appropriate as it clearly does not move us in the right direction."

Yeah, right. Shocked and appalled. Millions of Republicans have laughed their heads off at the song, featured on the Rush Limbaugh Show. So spare us the crocodile tears, Mike. You and your party establishmentarians are intellectually and ideologically bankrupt. Bowing down before the PC gods won't save your sorry hide.

Mike Duncan and the rest of the country club Republicans should apologize not for the song, but for for being so politically inept and clueless that they would let something like this get within 10 miles of GOP Headquarters. Half the country already believes the GOP is just a front organization for the Ku Klux Klan. You'd think the GOP apparatchiks would be a little more image conscious.

The song is based on a 2007 David Ehrenstein opinion piece of the same name in the LA Times. He explores how Guilty White Liberal Syndrome could bolster Mr. Obama's candidacy:

But it's clear that Obama also is running for an equally important unelected office, in the province of the popular imagination — the "Magic Negro."

The Magic Negro is a figure of postmodern folk culture, coined by snarky 20th century sociologists, to explain a cultural figure who emerged in the wake of Brown vs. Board of Education. "He has no past, he simply appears one day to help the white protagonist," reads the description on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magical_Negro .

He's there to assuage white "guilt" (i.e., the minimal discomfort they feel) over the role of slavery and racial segregation in American history, while replacing stereotypes of a dangerous, highly sexualized black man with a benign figure for whom interracial sexual congress holds no interest.

As might be expected, this figure is chiefly cinematic — embodied by such noted performers as Sidney Poitier, Morgan Freeman, Scatman Crothers, Michael Clarke Duncan, Will Smith and, most recently, Don Cheadle. And that's not to mention a certain basketball player whose very nickname is "Magic."

So here's a liberal columnist citing the work of liberal sociologists using the now famous phrase. A white conservative satirist picks it up and makes a funny song based on it, and Democrats mau mau the Republicans into apologizing. Once again, the inept Republicans bring a butter knife to a gun fight.

Is the song funny? I think so. Is it offensive? Not in my opinion, but I'm not black. Does it belong in the public arena? Yes. It's called free speech, and as satire, it's pretty tame when stacked up against South Park or Dave Chappelle. Regardless of the merits of the song, it is inappropriate for the GOP establishment to be trafficking in this stuff.

They only compounded their sin by gutlessly collapsing before the liberal onslaught instead of owning it and intellectually defending it. Ken Blackwell, an African-American contender to run the party, showed true leadership with his response:

"Unfortunately, there is hypersensitivity in the press regarding matters of race. This is in large measure due to President-Elect Obama being the first African-American elected president," said Blackwell, who would be the first black RNC chairman, in a statement forwarded to Politico by an aide.

This is the leadership the GOP needs. No politically correct bowing and scraping to manufactured outrage, of which we have an overabundance in this country. Just an acknowledgment of the hoo-ha and restoring it to a rational context.

In fact, an edgy, 20-something GOP leadership could have flipped this back on the so-last-century media and actually attracted the attention of the Colbert and John Stewart generation. But in the hands of the ancient, white GOP upper-crust, this just looks creepy and racist. If this doesn't convince conservatives that the place needs wholesale firings and fumigation, I don't know what will.

The very existence of the Republican party does damage to the conservative cause. Time to burn it down and start over with younger, more intellectually vibrant leadership.

We had a Merry Christmas

We scaled back on the gift buying this year and gave a little more to charity. We went to church and thanked God for all he has given us. We enjoyed family togetherness, ate good, watched Christmas videos, moved the wise men closer each evening, and sang carols around the Christmas tree. We had a merry and blessed Christmas.

I awoke on the 26th to see headlines announcing this was the worst "holiday season" ever.

How can the worst retail holiday season in years get worse? It can become the worst holiday season since anyone kept accurate records.

There have been signs for several weeks that e-commerce and store sales were falling at single digit rates. But, as each day passed, the industry hoped that discounts would lure shoppers back into stores for that one final spending spree.

Qando, in a blasphemous fit, went so far as to call it a Black Christmas.

But this year, after a moderate uptick in shopping activity boosted by steep promotions the Friday after Thanksgiving, shoppers closed their wallets and reopened them only cautiously, worried by job losses, a sinking stock market and a recession climbing into its second year.

This Christmas was not black, and it was not a failure. A savior has been born. No man can change that.

The failure was with the Happy Holidays, Winter Solstice, secular plastic shop till you drop celebration. That was a bust.

Materialism coarsens and petrifies everything, making everything vulgar, and every truth false.
-- Henri Frederic Amiel

Stuff

Overweight, overleveraged, overdrawn, overburdened with too much stuff. We like stuff, and we love shopping for it. Anne Quindlen writes:

These are dark days in the United States: the cataclysmic stock-market declines, the industries edging up on bankruptcy, the home foreclosures and the waves of layoffs. But the prospect of an end to plenty has uncovered what may ultimately be a more pernicious problem, an addiction to consumption so out of control that it qualifies as a sickness. The suffocation of a store employee by a stampede of shoppers was horrifying, but it wasn't entirely surprising.

But let's look, not at the numbers, but the atmospherics. Appliances, toys, clothes, gadgets. Junk. There's the sad truth. Wall Street executives may have made investments that lost their value, but, in a much smaller way, so did the rest of us. A person in the United States replaces a cell phone every 16 months, not because the cell phone is old, but because it is oldish.

Hard times offer the opportunity to ask hard questions, and one of them is the one my friend asked, staring at sweaters and shoes: why did we buy all this stuff? Did anyone really need a flat-screen in the bedroom, or a designer handbag, or three cars?

Irresponsible use of credit got us here, so what's the government's solution?

The drumbeat that accompanied Black Friday this year was that the numbers had to redeem us, that if enough money was spent by shoppers it would indicate that things were not so bad after all. But what the economy required was at odds with a necessary epiphany. Because things are dire, many people have become hesitant to spend money on trifles. And in the process they began to realize that it's all trifles.

Rampant consumerism drives our economy, so to fix this mess we need to borrow, shop and spend more. This is where the pursuit of stuff has gotten us.

Anne Quindlen, an innocuous, squishy-middle liberal who writes very well, gets it:

Here I go, stating the obvious: stuff does not bring salvation.

No it doesn't. Holocaust survivor Dr.Viktor Frankl observed that happiness can occur even in the extreme privation of a concentration camp. He also believed that happiness cannot be pursued for its own sake. To achieve happiness, one must forget about it and pursue a cause greater than oneself and be true to ones conscience.

And Salvation? One must look a little higher than the Best Buy sign.

The upside of failure is that it draws our attention back to the fundamentals.

My Blago Prediction

- Blago gets off scott free
- Blago appoints a corrupt Chicago Democrat to fill Obama's seat
- The corrupt Democratic machine maintains it's death grip on Illinois

Virtue Rewarded

Kosovo Names Street For President Bush

(AFP) Kosovo decided Wednesday to name a central street of its capital Pristina after outgoing US President George W. Bush for his support of the territory's split from Serbia.

Backed unanimously by Kosovo's cabinet, Prime Minister Hashim Thaci said the move was "a sign of the huge state and national respect and appreciation" for the United States' contribution to independence, declared earlier this year.

Located in Pristina's downtown area, Bush Street is to be linked to the main thoroughfare named after Mother Teresa, the 1979 Nobel Peace Laureate of Albanian origin.

Fans of Michael Totten will not be surprised by this. His raw reports from Iraq gave us the often brutal truth, but never in a sneering, NY Times way. He was also the first to herald the good news of the Sunni Awakening and the positive results from the surge. He has written of Kosovo:

Most of its citizens are Muslim, an oddity in Europe; further, unlike most Muslim-majority nations, Kosovo is overwhelmingly pro-American, and its relations with Israel are excellent as well.

Totten has also written of Albania, Kosovo's neighboring country, which is also majority Muslim:

Albania is fanatically pro-American, which is perhaps a bit counterintuitive to many Americans since it is at least nominally a Muslim-majority country. The conventional assumption that Muslims hate Americans everywhere isn't true.

“You should have seen President Bush’s face when he came to Albania,” an ethnic Albanian man later said to me in Kosovo. “All over Western Europe he was met by protests, but the entire country of Albania turned out to welcome him. He was so happy. You could see it on his face.”

Albanian pro-Americanism resembles that of both Poland and Iraqi Kurdistan. The unspeakably oppressive communist regime pushed Albanians strongly into the U.S.-led Western camp, and the humanitarian rescue of Albanians in Kosovo from Slobodan Milosevic's tyrannical despotism bolstered that sentiment even more.

Albania, Kosovo, Kurdistan, and to a lesser extent the newly-free countries of Eastern Europe: Nations with memories of brutal tyranny still fresh in their collective minds, greatly appreciate what the US has done for them. Indeed, even the radically anti-US newspaper, Britain's Guardian headlined their story saying he received a hero's welcome.

So, take a moment to feel good about your country and your president. We've freed a lot of people.

Silverfiddle's Canon

Blogger and teacher Ben Sutherland had a post a few weeks ago where he pondered new ways to make classical liberal thought (as opposed to modern liberal orthodoxy) accessible and cool to kids. We're just not teaching people how to think and analyze any more, we're teaching our kids what to think (indoctrination). Our ignorance of history and inability to put current events into historical perspective will lead us to ruin.

Here's what Ben said:

I've got some ideas. They're going to take work. A mix of Mark Twain and John Stuart Mill. With some Larry the Cable Guy, Mike Judge and Stephen Colbert thrown in for good measure.

I'm a little Mill-heavy and Twain-light, at this point. But I'll keep working on it.

Somehow we gotta make thinking fun, laid-back, and cool. They are, in the right hands. Now I just gotta translate that into something a bit more digestable for folks with less appreciation for classical liberal thought.

I'm curious to hear your own thoughts, Silverfiddle. Who are your favorite thinkers? Enquiring minds want to know.

Here's my answer:
I am not a philosopher, so I don't look to any one person or secular school of thought to guide my life. I am also not into hero worship; so I don't try to model my life after any human being. I think the Holy Bible is the greatest book in the history of the world and no greater guide to life can be found.

I'm also not a teacher, so it would be folly for me to give teaching ideas to Ben. Here's what I can recommend: Know how to think, know what you believe, know your history.

Know how to think
Logical, critical thinking is the most important skill. An easy way to introduce yourself to logic is to do a sudoku. A simple explanation of the syllogism is also a good start. Add to that some examples of logical fallacies and you now at least have a logical framework to analyze what someone is telling you. There are on-line resources that can get you started.

Know what you believe
A person with no moral code is a fire. Could do good, could do bad, depending on which way the wind blows. Any religious person should start with their religious text. For Christians, that's The Holy Bible, Old Testament and New Testament. The Bible contains every note in the key of life. It starts with God creating mankind and quickly goes downhill from there. The story of God leading the ungrateful Hebrews out of bondage is a story of each ungrateful person's struggle with obeying the creator. For those agnostics and atheists, there are many non-religious moral codes out there. Pick one.

Read history & the classics
I think history is the best teacher. Read enough and you will learn that there is indeed nothing new under the sun. You will also see that whatever you are going through is not the superlative event of its kind in the history of man. Things have been better, and things have been worse. We're living in higher luxury now, but the basic human condition has not changed over the millennia. The History of English Speaking Peoples, The Story of English, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and America, the Last Best Hope are good starters. Be sure to read things you think you will disagree with; it will stretch your brain and maybe change your mind.

Finally, a healthy dose of skepticism never hurt anyone.

See Silverfiddle's List of Great Books Here

A Minor Rebellion

I have always been one for lavishly decorating my house at Christmas, eight strings of icicle lights bedecking the eaves, six strands of C-7 lights all along the railings of my deck wrapping more than three quarters of the way around my house, lights in most if not all of the pine trees within reach of an extension cord (I live in the mountains and have lots of land, lots of pines, and lots of extension cords).

This year, having been subjected to Christmas decorations in stores since Halloween, I'm not quite in the mood. As a child I recall Christmas decorations appearing in stores after Thanksgiving and our tree and decorations might go up a week before Christmas. I don't know... it's just getting to be too much! What's next? I don't think I'll be able to handle Christmas decorations at the 4th of July barbecue, Santa in his red and white striped bathing suit flipping the burgers on the grill.

This year, I've taken a different approach, this year, I have one light. Yes, you read that right, one, and no, it's not a 4 million candlepower light either. This year we have adopted an old Irish tradition (I am Irish after all) of placing one candle (electric) in the front window of our home.

There are two interrelated histories about having a lighted candle in the front window of your home. The first, possibly dating back to the middle ages, is as a sign of welcome and hospitality, a sign of welcome to the holy family as they searched for a place to stay, only to be turned away from home after home and inn after inn. It goes along with the tradition of a laden table (bread and milk), and leaving the door unlatched for travellers.

The second dates back to the times of the penal laws, when the practice of Catholicism was banned in Ireland by it's British occupiers. The candle was a sign of welcome and of safety to itinerant priests, in the hopes that they would come to the house and offer up a Christmas Eve Mass (a dangerous and illegal endeavor). Of course, if questioned by the authorities, the candle was to welcome Mary and Joseph with a place to stay, a ruse that the authorities apparently bought, thinking...silly and superstitious Irish peasants.

So, we have one electric candle in the front window of our home, a symbol of hospitality.

We have a Christmas tree this year, albeit one smaller (much smaller) than usual, placed to one side of the fireplace. Honestly, I don't even know if you could call it a tree... it's more of a Christmas bush really.

Featured prominently on the mantle this year is a creche. It is a fairly large creche, with large porcelain figures of Mary and Joseph, a shepherd, lots of sheep, an ox, as well as Gaspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. Standing behind the manger is a larger than life Victorian porcelain angel, dressed all in white and silver. Sometime either late tonight or early tomorrow morning a porcelain figure of the baby Jesus shall come out to take center stage.

It is after all the reason for the season this Christ's Mass, isn't it?

Nollaig Mhaith Chugat!
A Good Christmas to You!

~Finntann~

Merry Christmas

And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, "Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the lord. This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."

Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests."

-- Luke 2: 8-14

... And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.

http://www.biblegateway.com

Seasons Greetings

To all my Liberal/Progressive Friends:
Please accept with no obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, low-stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral celebration of the winter solstice holiday, practiced within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasion and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious or secular traditions at all. I also wish you a fiscally successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2009, but not without due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions to society have helped make America great. Not to imply that America is necessarily greater than any other country nor the only America in the Western Hemisphere. Also, this wish is made without regard to the race, creed, color, age, physical ability, religious faith or sexual preference of the wishee.

To all my Conservative Friends:
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

-- Courtesy of an e-mail from my old buddy OD. Feliz Navidad!

Got Liberalism? Before The Crash

As we celebrate this Christmas looking into the abyss of total financial collapse, we need to recall how we got here. Yes, Demicans and Republicrats spent like crazy in pursuit of our votes, and we egged them on. Now we're $10 Trillion in the hole, $50 Trillion of you count all future liabilities.

But what crashed our economy? Democrats.
Led by Senator Chuck "Schmucky" Schumer and Congressman Barny "Frankenstein" Frank. Their unholy alliance with Fannie and Freddie caused this economic nightmare: Fannie and Freddie paid them campaign contributions while senators and congressment kept shoveling government money back at them while ignoring their ineptitude, mismanagement and outright fraud.

That, coupled with government coersion of financial institutions to drop prudent lending practices, is what pushed us over the edge.

Who warned of a crash and tried to stop it? Republicans.
Led by President "Compassionate Conservative" George Bush and Senator John "I'm too honorable to win" McCain. In a rare fit of conservatism, these two men tried to put the brakes on this unholy politico-financial-cluster-alliance, but were unsuccessful.

Here is a Fox News timeline on YouTube, courtesy of Proud To Be Canadian.



It is important we not forget how this happened. Every time some phoney baloney BDS sufferer opens his or her mouth about how George Bush wrecked the economy, we need to shove these facts back at them. They've got all the megaphones now, but that doesn't stop conservatives from speaking the truth.

More Scientists Defy Climate Dogma

These eminent scientists explain why they do not believe in global warming. Their explanations are much more cogent and logical that the those of the global warming crowd. I am not a climate scientist, so all I can do is read and figure out who to trust. I don't trust Al Gore or the UN. If others want to believe, I wish them well; just don't ask me and other hard working taxpayers to fund your fantasies.

WASHINGTON, DC – Award winning Princeton University Physicist Dr. Will Happer, who was reportedly fired by former Vice President Al Gore in 1993 for failing to adhere to Gore’s scientific views, has now declared man-made global warming fears “mistaken.”

“I am convinced that the current alarm over carbon dioxide is mistaken,” Happer, who has published over 200 scientific papers, told EPW on December 22, 2008. Happer made his remarks while requesting to join the 2008 U.S. Senate Minority Report from Environment and Public Works Ranking Member James Inhofe (R-OK) of over 650 (and growing) dissenting international scientists disputing anthropogenic climate fears.

“I have spent a long research career studying physics that is closely related to the greenhouse effect, for example, absorption and emission of visible and infrared radiation, and fluid flow,” Happer said this week. “Fears about man-made global warming are unwarranted and are not based on good science. The earth's climate is changing now, as it always has. There is no evidence that the changes differ in any qualitative way from those of the past,” he added.

“Over the past 500 million years since the Cambrian, when fossils of multicellular life first became abundant, the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been much higher than current levels, about 3 times higher on average. Life on earth flourished with these higher levels of carbon dioxide,” he explained. “Computer models used to generate frightening scenarios from increasing levels of carbon dioxide have scant credibility,” Happer added.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Dr. W. M. Schaffer, Ph. D., of the University of Arizona - Tucson, past member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, who has authored more than 80 scientific publications and authored the paper “Human Population and Carbon Dioxide,” dissented in 2008.

“My principal objections to the theory of anthropogenic warming are as follows:

1) I am mistrustful of ‘all but the kitchen sink’ models that, by virtue of their complexity, cannot be analyzed mathematically. When we place our trust in such models, what too often results is the replacement of a poorly understood physical (chemical, biological) system by a model that is similarly opaque,” Schaffer told EPW on December 19, 2008.

2) I am troubled by the application of essentially linear thinking to what is arguably the ‘mother of all nonlinear dynamical systems’ - i.e., the climate.

3) I believe it likely that "natural climate cycles" are the fingerprints of chaotic behavior that is inherently unpredictable in the long-term. As reviewed in a forthcoming article (Schaffer, in prep), these cycles are "dense" on chaotic attractors and have the stability properties of saddles. Evolving chaotic trajectories successively shadow first one cycle, then another. The result is a sequence of qualitatively different behaviors - what climatologists call "regime shift" - independent of extrinsic influences. Tsonis and his associates discuss this phenomenon in terms of network theory and ‘synchronized chaos,’ but these embellishments are not necessary. To be chaotic is to dance the dance of the saddles,” Schaffer explained.

“The recent lack of warming in the face of continued increases in CO2 suggests

(a) that the effects of greenhouse gas forcing have been over-stated;

(b) that the import of natural variability has been underestimated and

(c) that concomitant rises of atmospheric CO2 and temperature in previous decades may be coincidental rather than causal,” he added.

“I fear that things could easily go the other way: that the climate could cool, perhaps significantly; that the consequences of a new Little Ice Age or worse would be catastrophic and that said consequences will be exacerbated if we meanwhile adopt warmist prescriptions. This possibility, plus the law of unintended consequences, leads me to view proposed global engineering ‘solutions’ as madness. (LINK) (LINK)(LINK)

Info courtesy of Marc Morano, Office of Senator James Inhofe, Senate EPW Committee

Venezuela: A Latin American Primer

We have met the oligarchy and they are us.

Most Americans don't understand Latin America. Why bother? It's just a confusing jumble of left-wing... no, right-wing... oh whatever! Google the news for Guatemala or Uruguay and you get political corruption stories or soccer scores.

Venezuela contains everything you need to know about Latin America. It was a peaceful, stable democracy where the rich oligarchs crapped all over the poor while calling it "capitalism" and "democracy." This paved the way for Colonel Hugo Chavez to knock over the government and declare a revolution of the people. He was jailed for his efforts, but won election to the presidency six years later because the rich and powerful didn't take his candidacy seriously enough to get a corrupt judge to block it.

Well, ten years later, the poor are still poor, and the right-wing oligarchs have been replaced by the left-wing oligarchs. Vanessa Neumann reports from Caracas that the Chavez effect is wearing thin.

Meanwhile the Chavistas, as the president's fans are known, buy so many Hummers that the vehicles have their own assembly plant in Venezuela.

Petro-money has seen sales of Rolexes rise sevenfold and clubs like Sawu, where the new elite pour Johnnie Walker Blue - that elixir of the ultra rich - into their Coca-Colas, flourish.

The fact that the institutions of privilege have merely changed hands increasingly angers ordinary people who were promised everything and have been given very little.

Reminds me of that line from the song by The Who, Won't Get Fooled Again: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk

Belgium In Crisis, Nobody Noticed

Government Helps Those Who Won't Help Themselves

This is the stupidity that government intervention in markets engenders: Cerberus Capital Management LP, which owns Chrysler, is refusing to put more money into its failing company because competitors Ford and GM are not taking similar measures to save their rotting empires. This is an absurdity, and our tax dollars should have no part of it. Here's a snippet from CBS News:

Congress urged Cerberus to infuse Chrysler with capital earlier this month, but the company rejected the plea, noting that Ford and GM were not being asked to inject more capital into their flailing operations, the Journal reported.

Here's a simple question from a simple man: If the Big Three's own investors are refusing to put more money into their operations, why should the government contemplate putting taxpayer money into it?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/12/18/business/main4675171.shtml?tag=topStory;topStoryHeadline

Common Sense as Rocket Science

I was enjoying a discussion with fellow Bloggers about irresponsible kids and their stupid parents when Ben Sutherland asked a simple question:

When did common sense become brain surgery?

My Dad has said as much to me on various occasions. I was talking to him enthusiastically about one of Dave Ramsey's financial advice books and Papa Silverfiddle could not believe somebody was making money selling common sense. This was information he learned on on my Grand Pappy's knee. Nothing against Dave Ramsey, he is doing the Lord's work for those willing to heed his sound advice, but this is stuff we used to know and take for granted:

Don't spend more than you have

Don't buy more house than you can afford

Live below your means if you want to save money

If you don't understand it, don't put your money in it

Save money for a rainy day

If it looks too good to be true, it probably is

There's no such thing as a free lunch

You can't cheat an honest man

Horace Greeley was right: Common sense is very uncommon.

Global Warming's Missed Opportunities

Arguments over global warming/climate change/whateveryouwanttocallit have taken on the tenor of religious discussions. Logic is abandoned for frantic imperatives to action: Don't think, just do something! Tax water vapor! Buy carbon offsets!

Crabby skeptics like me resent being labeled stupid, environmentally insensitive, unscientific, or *horror or horrors* uncaring. I love the environment; that's where the tasty animals come from. It also comes in pretty handy when I want to fish, camp or ski.

The angry shoutfest that has sprung from the climate change debate is is a shame, because there are real, uncontroversial global environmental issues that require international cooperation.

Climate fetishism wastes the finite resources needed to resolve these issues. This is what economists call an opportunity cost. The cost of trying to cool down the planet with expensive, dubious schemes is that the resources used cannot be used in solving more tangible and immediate problems. There are only so many dollars, people, and other resources in the world. If you spend a dollar here, you can't also spend it there.

Scientists and other climate experts like CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers are pushing back against the climate change movement's intellectual incontinence:

“You know, to think that we could affect weather all that much is pretty arrogant,” Myers said. “Mother Nature is so big, the world is so big, the oceans are so big – I think we’re going to die from a lack of fresh water or we’re going to die from ocean acidification before we die from global warming, for sure.”

Prominent intellectual and University of Copenhagen professor Bjorn Lomborg would disagree with Myers' first sentence but agree with the second. Lomborg is not an environmental scientist (he has a PhD in Political Science), but he has conducted some rigorous academic study on the subject of climate change. Lomborg accepts the premise that man is affecting the earth's climate. Where the professor parts company with the climate change crowd is in the solution. He writes in a recent WaPo article that resources should be dedicated to R&D efforts in pursuit of practical solutions such as more efficient solar panels and a new generation of biofuels.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a co-sponsor of the bill, has called it "the world's most far-reaching program to fight global warming." It is indeed policy on a grand scale. It would slow American economic growth by trillions of dollars over the next half-century. But in terms of temperature, the result will be negligible if China and India don't also commit to reducing their emissions, and it will be only slightly more significant if they do. By itself, Lieberman-Warner would postpone the temperature increase projected for 2050 by about two years.

Many people believe that everyone has a moral obligation to ask how we can best combat climate change. Attempts to curb carbon emissions along the lines of the bill now pending are a poor answer compared with other options.

Consider that today, solar panels are one-tenth as efficient as the cheapest fossil fuels. Only the very wealthy can afford them. Many "green" approaches do little more than make rich people feel they are helping the planet. We can't avoid climate change by forcing a few more inefficient solar panels onto rooftops.

The answer is to dramatically increase research and development so that solar panels become cheaper than fossil fuels sooner rather than later. Imagine if solar panels became cheaper than fossil fuels by 2050: We would have solved the problem of global warming, because switching to the environmentally friendly option wouldn't be the preserve of rich Westerners.

This message was recently backed up by the findings of the Copenhagen Consensus project, which gathered eight of the world's top economists -- including five Nobel laureates -- to examine research on the best ways to tackle 10 global challenges: air pollution, conflict, disease, global warming, hunger and malnutrition, lack of education, gender inequity, lack of water and sanitation, terrorism, and trade barriers.

These experts looked at the costs and benefits of different responses to each challenge. Their goal was to create a prioritized list showing how money could best be spent combating these problems. The panel concluded that the least effective use of resources in slowing global warming would come from simply cutting carbon dioxide emissions.

Air pollution and water pollution contribute to death and disease worldwide; lack of fresh water and biomass cause hunger, conflict and death. Most everyone can agree that these are pressing issues. Carbon emission restrictions via onerous taxation schemes will keep the developing world mired in poverty, while robbing the rich nations of their wealth. This in turn will destroy the economic engine needed to fund tangible environmental solutions.

I am a fan of Professor Lomborg because he gathers up the incoherent, disjointed shards of the chaotic climate change debate and constructs logical, practical solutions that satisfy all but the extreme fringes. The middle is where these solutions will be implemented. It is naive to imagine any country will economically castrate itself in sacrifice to Mother Earth.

Even at the personal level, people will not deny themselves what is readily available: Environmentally aware Hollywood celebutards jet around the world, drive gas hogs and live in palatial mansions, but scold me for using my gas powered chainsaw, leaving my computer running, and using too much toilet paper.

Professor Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus provides practical solutions that can preserve the environment while tangibly improving the lot of the poor. The brilliance of these solutions is that one can support them regardless of belief or disbelief in man-made climate change.

LINKS
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/25/AR2008062501946.html

http://www.lomborg.com/

Glass Houses

They mock Christianity while lavishing money on a church founded by a 1960's science fiction writer...
I can understand Tom Cruise, but I thought Will Smith was smarter than that.

http://gawker.com/5113028/will-smith-pours-more-money-into-scientology

Climate Change Orthodoxy

All those record low temperatures were making a mockery of Global Warming, so in a brilliant marketing ploy, Mother Earth worshipers changed the name to Climate Change. It was hot and sunny yesterday, but today it's snowing! Climate change!

Climate Change has left the realm of cold, logical scientific inquiry and has now become Religious Orthodoxy--Do Not Question Authority!

Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.

“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”

Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”

His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”

Like Copernicus and Galileo before him, Marciano bowed down and recanted under the weighty glare of Pope Albertus Maximus, Supreme Pontiff of The Church of Gaia and the International Climate Change Inquisition.

Larrey Anderson over at American Thinker explains how the climate change crowd's logic has collapsed upon itself, devolving the arrogant movement into a petty, incoherent religion. Here is a large excerpt from his article:

The original "climate change" hypothesis was that the planet was getting colder and that it would continue getting colder. That was a very simple hypothesis and was easily proven or refuted. Planet keeps getting colder = hypothesis correct. Planet gets warmer = hypothesis incorrect.

The world got warmer instead of colder. The "climate change" hypothesis was rewritten. This time the planet was facing a catastrophic meltdown. The world was not only getting warmer -- it was going to keep getting warmer at an ever increasing and life-threatening rate.

I remember this hypothesis too. It was scary. Computers were fed information that the world was now heating up and asked, again, "what will the weather be tomorrow?" This time the computers spit out: "hotter." Good computers.

The computers said it would be even hotter the day after tomorrow. Hotter still next week, and next month. And in a few years? Forget about it.

The hypothesis predicted, and the computers affirmed, an exponential increase in temperatures was being caused by the exponential increase in man made green house gases. Al Gore's famous (and refuted) "hockey stick graph" proved it. In other words, the earth would heat fast, then faster, then faster still. Man made global warming was predicted to be a run away train on a steep downhill incline that had to be stopped and stopped immediately.

That was the hypothesis. It was simple. And it was just as easily proved or refuted as the global cooling hypothesis. World gets steadily and increasingly warmer = hypothesis correct. Planet gets colder = hypothesis incorrect.

But while concentrations of CO2, the culprit behind man made global warming, continued to rise -- the temperature did not. The empirical data refused to cooperate with the hypothesis. In the last few years the earth's temperature has leveled off. It may be dropping.

Oops. Another hypothesis bites the dust. Not to worry. The hypothesis has been rewritten, once again. Now we have a "climate crisis." Long term global warming is causing short term global cooling that will, eventually, result in long term global warming. Really. That is the new hypothesis.

The official reason being given is that the "weather is not the climate." For those readers not skilled in dialectical huckstering, the argument seems to be that the weather can get colder while the climate gets warmer.

Proponents of global warming finally have an irrefutable, because incoherent, theory guaranteed to win any debate. This hypothesis cannot be refuted. If the "weather" cools it proves that the "climate" is getting warmer. If the weather gets warmer then the climate gets warmer. As the barker shouts out at the carnival,
"Winner! Winner! Winner!"

This latest hypothesis is a violation of the most basic of the laws of logic: the principle of non-contradiction. Something cannot be both A and not A. The weather cannot get colder while the climate gets hotter anymore than the earth can be flat while the world is round. This is not science, or logic; this is unabashed nonsense.

Yes. Climate science has come to this: We are now being told, in effect, to ignore the data and believe the hypothesis. I have recently written that global warming is not a science -- it is a religion. I take it back. Global warming, aka climate crisis, is now a crisis of logic. In other words, it is insanity.

Larrey Anderson is a writer, a philosopher, and submissions editor for American Thinker. His latest award-winning novel is The Order of the Beloved. His memoir, Underground: Life and Survival in the Russian Black Market, has just been released.

Links

http://businessandmedia.org/articles/2008/20081218205953.aspx

http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/12/climate_crisis_logic_crisis.html

The Nationalization of America

Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Merril Lynch, to name some of the more recognizable institutions that you, the American taxpayer now own part of, Federal investments for the above institutions range from 10-25 billion each.

Ask most people what the bailout is, and chances are they won't answer with: The partial nationalization of the banking system. To speed the plan through congress the administration said the money was needed to purchase bad mortgage-related assets, and said nothing about direct stock purchases.

Most of the Treasury's investments so far have been in preferred bank stocks and most of them thus far have been losing investments.

The government has thus far given Citigroup 45 billion dollars, aside from preferred stock at $1000/share, the government deal included warrants for 210 million shares at $17.85 and 254 million shares at $10.61, Citigroup closed today at $7.02, a potential loss of over 3 billion dollars.

Today, the President offered a 17.4 billion dollar bailout to the auto industry, declaring, in a gesture worthy of Hugo Chavez, Public Law 110-342 to be 'non-binding'. The bailout demands concessions similar to those rejected by the Senate a week ago.

If you'd like to read what the law says:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=110_cong_public_laws&docid=f:publ343.110.pdf

Some of the terms include a requirement to cut compensation for rank-and-file workers, executive compensation restrictions, sale of aircraft or interests in aircraft, detail spending on holiday parties, travel and new real estate, and get White House approval for asset sales and other transactions of more than $100 million. Nothing like a free market, eh?

The question that remains, is why is this all silently passing by?

Socialism by any other name...

~Finntann~

Global Warming Skeptics Question Authority

Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer.
-- George Santayana

Do not allow yourselves to be deceived: Great Minds are Skeptical.
-- Friedrich Nietzsche

Millions of gullible world citizens have surrendered all sanity and skepticism to worship at Reverend Albert Gore's altar to Gaia.

Meanwhile, here are quotes from some of the world's leading scientists to remind us that the science is not "settled," nor is there a consensus. Both very unscientific terms, by the way:

“I am a skeptic…Global warming has become a new religion.” - Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Ivar Giaever.

“Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receiving any funding, I can speak quite frankly….As a scientist I remain skeptical.” - Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Joanne Simpson, the first woman in the world to receive a PhD in meteorology and formerly of NASA who has authored more than 190 studies and has been called “among the most preeminent scientists of the last 100 years.”

Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in the history…When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” - UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, an award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.

“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds… I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists,” - Indian geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.

“The models and forecasts of the UN IPCC "are incorrect because they only are based on mathematical models and presented results at scenarios that do not include, for example, solar activity.” - Victor Manuel Velasco Herrera, a researcher at the Institute of Geophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico

“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” - U.S Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA.

“Even doubling or tripling the amount of carbon dioxide will virtually have little impact, as water vapour and water condensed on particles as clouds dominate the worldwide scene and always will.” – . Geoffrey G. Duffy, a professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering of the University of Auckland, NZ.

“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri's asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it's hard to remain quiet.” - Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society's Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.

“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?" - Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” - Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland, who reversed his belief in man-made warming to become a skeptic, is a former member of the Dutch UN IPCC committee.

“Many [scientists] are now searching for a way to back out quietly (from promoting warming fears), without having their professional careers ruined.” - Atmospheric physicist James A. Peden, formerly of the Space Research and Coordination Center in Pittsburgh.

“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” - Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal, the founder of the Numerical Weather Forecast group, has more than 150 published articles.

“CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another….Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so…Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.” - Dr. Takeda Kunihiko, vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan.

“The [global warming] scaremongering has its justification in the fact that it is something that generates funds.” - Award-winning Paleontologist Dr. Eduardo Tonni, of the Committee for Scientific Research in Buenos Aires and head of the Paleontology Department at the University of La Plata.

This collection of quotes comes courtesy of Mark Morano, dedicated staffer to Senator James Inhofe, Republican, Oklahoma. Senator Inhofe uses his good offices to expose the Global Warming panic. Go here to see his official Senate web site and the latest report.